Deeplinks Blog posts about National Security Letters

"I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this."

Much of the debate over modern surveillance—including the NSA mass spying controversy—has centered around whether people can reasonably expect that records about their telephone and Internet activity can remain private when those records belong to someone else: the service providers. Courts havedisagreed on whether the 1979 Supreme Court case Smith v. Maryland, which ruled people have no expectation of privacy in the phone numbers they dial, should be extended to cover newer, more invasive forms of technology.

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2013 and discussing where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. Click here to read other blog posts in this series.

We were pleasantly surprised by Verizon’s announcement this week that it will become the first major telecommunications company to release a transparency report. In early 2014, Verizon will follow in the footsteps of companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple, and will finally adopt this best practice and begin to tell its customers, and the American public, the details about how often law enforcement comes knocking with requests for user data. Verizon’s welcome announcement came the same day that Google updated its transparency report, which it has regularly released since 2010. Google's latest report details significant and troubling increases in government requests to remove content from the Internet.